The Archives and Manuscripts of the Gunnerus Library

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Ark4 is a cooperation
project between 4 Institutions of Trondheim NTNU UB; IDI;Regional State Archives and Deaf Museum.
The first prototype was launched in June and 12 students from the Steiner
school in Trondheim participated to a workshop about plants in collaboration
with Ringve Botanical garden, Vitenskapmuseet in Trondheim and Bjørn Sæther.
The 7th of february a workshop was organized in collaboration with our
international partner and evaluator, Athena Research Center, Athens Greece and the Norwegian embassy at Athens.
School children of an age from 10 to 17 participated in an ARK4 workshop on
botany and plants. The introduction was presented by our expert on botany,
Gabriella Papstefanou, and the game was offered on a touch-screen by our IT
expert Ioannis Lefteriotis. The kids answered a Knowledge test before and after
the activity and they answered a survey about the quality of the gaming experience,
they had. At the end they were interviewed by our collaborators from
"Athena" RC, Agiati Benardou and Eliza Papaki, that were also
observing them while working with the ARK4 application. The results will be
published in a report and presented in EAA conference i September 2015.Ark4
intends to create a user methodology that can be shared by the national and
regional community of libraries, schools and archives.

At the same time two
more applications will be aunched in March 2015, one based on the content
provided by the Deaf Museum of Trondheim with Line Norsveen as our partner and
content developer and Gunnar Sørum from the States Archive of Trondheim. Both
applications will be tested during the following months. ARK4 launched as well
a film today in MUBIL channel in You tube which you can watch here in
collaboration with the project Opp i Dagen, with Anne Katrine Meland who is
leading the project in Rødøy. The project is creating activities in the
immediate community in order to engage school children and local enterprises in
the seek of knowledge of the past.The experienced archaeologist
Kari Binns Støren has provided the illustrations used in the Rødøyquiz and
video. The film will be supplemented by a knowledge quiz to be played by the
participants of workshops organized by ARK4 in May in collaboration with Anne Katrine
Meland.The layout was done by Irene D. Marquez, the technical realization
was done by Chiara Evangelista and the music by Marianna Røe.

Friday, January 9, 2015

ARK4: An interactive heritage library.

What happens on the day

The workshop starts with a simple survey questionnaire, to assess the
participants' current level of knowledge on the subject - in the case of this
pilot, plants. They will get a basic introduction to the subject and then
play a game on a large touch-screen, in small groups. After they enjoy
the game, they will answer a few questions, comparable to the initial survey,
to assess whether they gained knowledge through the game.

What they will be helping us achieve

We aim to evaluate how users' understanding of a subject advances
through playing, as well as their engagement and satisfaction with the
activity. The overall aim of this workshop is to inform the further
development of this concept and platform, helping it towards its ultimate
goal of becoming a standard teaching tool.

About the pilot

The project' starting point is a pilot platform, which combines high
definition digital representations of old books, with artefacts, artwork and
archive material, into a game to be explored by high school
students, in a workshop format that supports learning. The pilot's
game is based on Flora Danica, a scientific encyclopaedia
on Scandinavian fauna.

What is ARK4

ARK4 seeks to create a virtual dialogue between
the public and institutions which hold
information. By exploring innovative technology, it aims to
disseminate knowledge from the past to a wider, younger audience. ARK4
intends to apply user-centric methods and collect fresh narratives,
which it will then share with libraries, schools, archives,
community organisations, both locally and nationally.

The software for the ARK4 game was developed
by Michail Giannakos (Assistant Professor in NTNU, IDI) and
Giannis Eleftheriotis (doctoral candidate, University of
Corfu, Greece). The game's questions were conceived by Gabriella Papastefanou (Phd in
Biology, University of Crete, Greece). Agiatis Benardou
(Senior Research Associate, Digital Curation UnitR.C. "Athena", Institute for the
Management of Information Systems), will be observing
the workshop, in order to evaluate the results and assess the
playing experience.

The archival content of the game was provided by NTNU University
Library and the research suite was designed by
Prof. Michail Giannakos, NTNU. The project is financed by NTNU
and the National Library of Oslo's New Dissemination Methods programme.

Service terms and prices

We have about 400 000 photographs from Trondheim in the early 1900’s until around 1940’s in our collection. We are in process of digitizing the material, and you can search our digital collection on the website “trondheimsbilder”. Here you can search by name, address or location. To order a photo you need to follow the link called “more options and information”, and then a link called “bestill bilde” (order photo) in Norwegian.

In case you wish to publish the photo we charge a use fee of 500 NOK for commercial publications, and 200 NOK for non-commercial publications each time the material is published.

History of the Archives and The Bishop of Nidaros

The history.

The library was originally established by the the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters which was was founded in 1760 by Bishop Johan Ernst Gunnerus, Gerhard Schøning, a headmaster, and Councillor of State Peter Friderich Suhm under the name Det Trondhiemske Selskab (the Trondheim Society). It received the Royal Affirmation of its statutes in 1767 and was named Det Kongelige Norske Videnskabers Selskab . The cultural heritage collections are going back to the 1760s when the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters began collecting natural history material and also material pertaining to cultural history. Today it includes Manuscripts, Libri Rari 400.000 pictures and documents together with many other collections of books and items of great value for the history of the area around Trondheim but as well as for the whole of Norway in general.

Bishop Johan Ernst Gunnerus was the first person to embody the theology of enlightment in Norway and has been termed as " one of the most universal spirits that has been bred by the nation".